AQA recreations reassurance needed!

I was planning to get the students to write a story based loosely on 'Sister Maude' but the mark scheme seems to be focused mostly on non-fiction writing. Has anyone done this unit yet? What are your thoughts?

I was planning to get the students to write a story based loosely on 'Sister Maude' but the mark scheme seems to be focused mostly on non-fiction writing. Has anyone done this unit yet? What are your thoughts?

It is for GCSE unit 3b. The syllabus says 'write in a variety of non-fiction genres' and the guidance given in the 'Preparing to Teach' booklet says ' writing a non-fiction or journalistic piece based on the content of the poem' BUT the 'Cntrolled Assessment Tasks' booklet says it could be the 'basis of a short stroy'. Hence the confusion!

but the mark scheme seems to be focused mostly on non-fiction writing.

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Have just had another look a the mark scheme, and I don't really see why you feel this. It is all pretty vague, as it has to cover the moving image and the "commissions" strands as well as the so-called creative piece.
But one of the suggestions they give is "Capulet's assault on his ungrateful daughter could become the basis of a short story about parent/child relationships". It even says that it is not necessary to keep the same characters.
But if you are not doing the "converting a situation from a Shakespeare play into a modern piece of writing," you will have to use the text you have chosen "as a springboard for a piece of writing about your own life or an aspect of young people's lives," which sounds more like writing to explore than short story material. Think I'll stick with the Shakespeare re-creation.

I think you missed out the word "predominantly" which makes sense looking at the ~CA tasks - only the Recreations column gives opportunity for fictional writing. Anyway, you can't go wrong if you follow the CA tasks.

Oh dear - we were following the task booklet so we produced one non-fiction comparative piece on two media texts (a film review!) and for the creative (fiction) piece, the guidance of 'a creative writing website using the tile Change' (sorry, I can't remember the exact wording!). We understood the non-fiction writing to be media (as we have done) or creating a recreative piece around an existing text (rather like in the AQA AS B Spec!). IS THIS WRONG? Am panicing now!

Thank you all for your advice! Anteater - you were right about the vague markscheme! We will go with the task in the CA booklet, the Shakespeare recreation.
It seems that I was not the only one confused though. Does the exam board ever read this site...?

No need to panick - what you have done sounds absolutely fine. As far as the mark scheme goes, it's not vague, it's generalised because there are so many different types of writing which need to be covered. Can you imagine how big the spec would need to be to incorporate a different mark scheme for each particular text type or genre? The whole thrust of this spec is skills based so teachers have considerable freedom within some very broad prescribed tasks. AQA does read the site and is not happy to see people feeling confused! but the board wants teachers to cover the skills of English without being told exactly what to do and having things regimented and prescribed. That way, it is hoped that teachers and students will be able to do something they enjoy whilst meeting the AOs.